Plan a month of social content in an afternoon

What you’ll have at the end

Twenty to twenty-five social media post ideas for one platform, organised by content type and spread across a month. Not a random list — a mix of educational, trust-building, behind-the-scenes, and promotional posts in the right proportions for a business account. Ready to take into Canva, write out, and schedule.

This isn’t about going viral. It’s about showing up consistently without spending half your week thinking about what to post.

The mistake most people make

Most business owners approach social media like this: open the app, stare at a blank text box, think of something, post it, repeat in three days when the guilt gets bad enough.

This is the hardest possible way to do it. Coming up with ideas under pressure, one at a time, with no context or structure, is creative work at its most exhausting. No wonder the account goes quiet for three weeks every other month.

The fix isn’t more discipline. It’s batching. Sit down once, plan everything, produce everything, schedule everything. Done for the month.

AI is genuinely good at the brainstorming part of this — the part where you need twenty ideas across different angles. It’s not good at producing finished posts from nothing. Use it for the plan; use yourself for the voice.

What you need before you start

Four things before you open the AI tool:

1. Your platform. Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook — pick one. The content types and format expectations are different. Run this process per platform if you’re on multiple.

2. Three to four content themes. These are the topics you’ll rotate through. They should be directly connected to your business and your customer’s concerns. For a bookkeeper for trades businesses, they might be: cash flow tips, tax myths for tradies, behind the scenes of a bookkeeping review, client wins. For a physio clinic: injury prevention, recovery tips, what to expect at an appointment, patient progress stories. Your themes should stay stable — change the topics within them, not the themes themselves.

3. What’s happening in your business this month. Any promotions, events, new services, seasonal relevance, deadlines customers should know about. You’ll want at least two to three posts tied to real calendar items rather than evergreen content.

4. Your posting frequency target. Be honest about what you’ll actually keep up. Four posts a week is better in theory; two posts a week you actually do is better in practice. Pick a number you’ll hit.

The brief, ready to copy

You're helping me plan a month of social media content for my business.

Platform:
[Instagram / LinkedIn / Facebook]

My business:
[what you do and who your customers are — two sentences]

My content themes (3–4):
[list them — the topic areas you'll rotate through]

What's happening in my business this month:
[promotions, events, new services, seasonal moments — list anything relevant]

My posting frequency:
[posts per week — be realistic]

Please create a content plan with these types of posts in this rough mix:
- 40%: Educational / useful (tips, how-tos, myth-busting, FAQs — content that helps the customer even if they don't buy)
- 30%: Trust-building (behind the scenes, how I work, customer results — stated as outcomes, not testimonials)
- 20%: Promotional (offers, services, why work with me — kept to a minority so it doesn't feel like an ad account)
- 10%: Personal / human (an opinion, something I noticed, a short story — keeps the account from feeling corporate)

For each post idea, give me:
- The week it goes out
- The content type (educational / trust / promotional / personal)
- A one-line description of the post idea
- A suggested hook (the first line — the thing that stops the scroll)

Organise by week. Don't write the full posts — just the ideas and hooks.
Tie at least two or three ideas to the business events I listed.
Australian English spelling.

What you’ll get back

A structured plan — usually five to six posts per week if you asked for that frequency, broken into the four content types. The hook suggestions are the most useful part: they’re the hardest line to write, and AI gives you something to work from rather than starting blank.

A few things to expect:

• The educational posts will be solid but generic. Ask for a revision: “Make the tip in week two more specific to [your type of customer] — they already know the basics.”
• The trust-building posts may be phrased as vague testimonial language (“customers love our service”). Rewrite them as specific outcomes: “How we turned a three-year-old BAS backlog into a clean set of books in six weeks.”
• Some hook suggestions will be a bit flat. Keep the ones that would make you stop scrolling; rewrite the ones that wouldn’t.

What to always change by hand

Three things to edit before you treat this as a final plan:

1. The hooks. Take each one and ask: would I stop scrolling for this? Be honest. If the answer’s no, make it more specific, more surprising, or more directly about a problem your customer has. The hook is 80% of the post’s performance — don’t leave it as whatever AI first suggested.

2. The trust-building ideas. Replace any idea that’s vague (“show what you do”) with a specific story you actually have. AI doesn’t know your real client wins. You do. Swap in the real ones.

3. Anything that doesn’t sound like you. If a post idea assumes a tone that’s not yours — too formal, too casual, too “influencer” — cut it or swap it for something that fits how you actually talk. Social media only works if it sounds like a person your customers recognise.

A quick check before you start producing

Before you go from plan to posts:

• Is there at least one post per week tied to something real in your business (not just evergreen tips)?
• Is the promotional content a minority — less than a quarter of the plan?
• Are there any hooks that would genuinely make you stop scrolling?
• Is the plan achievable — will you actually produce this content in the time you have?

If yes to all four, you’ve got a plan worth executing.

Where to take this next

A content plan is the easy part. The harder parts are: producing the posts consistently without it taking all day, repurposing content across platforms without it feeling copy-pasted, and knowing which post types are actually driving enquiries versus which ones just get likes.

Using Codex to produce the actual posts (not just the plan), repurpose them for different platforms, and track what’s working — that’s part of the Codex for Business Owners workshop. See the syllabus →